BEIS release positive proposals on planning for energy storage devices

• Earlier today the Government released their Treatment of Electricity Storage Within the Planning System consultation

• The proposals will mean that co-located storage and renewables projects in England will not need to go through the time-consuming national planning process if either the capacity of the storage element is less than 50MW or the capacity excluding any electricity storage is less than 50MW.
• This is an issue that the REA has campaigned for action on over the past few years.

Frank Gordon, Head of Policy at the REA commented:

“A future UK electricity system with high energy storage deployment will reduce the need to produce ‘peak’ demand from fossil fuels, accelerate decarbonisation by improving the efficiency of wind and solar generation, and will reduce the need for costly grid reinforcement.

“With this consultation the Government is proposing to make it easier for grid-scale storage to secure planning permission, which will remove a crucial barrier to this promising sector’s growth and in turn will support job creation in clean tech design, manufacturing, and operations.

“While we welcome this, in our response to this consultation we will urge the Government to go further, for example the capacity threshold being set at 50MW is limiting and more can be done to facilitate deployment by granting expanded Permitted Development rights.

“Tackling this planning issue for storage was first outlined in the Government’s Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan – a comprehensive document, supported by industry, which we believe will help enable a cheaper, smarter, more flexible energy system.”

—ENDS—

Notes to editors

The treatment of electricity storage within the planning system consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-treatment-of-electricity-storage-within-the-planning-system
Energy Storage is modelled in Section 7 of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Flexibility Solutions for High Renewable Energy Systems report (Nov 2018) which can be found here: https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/2018/11/UK-Flexibility-Solutions-for-High-Renewable-Energy-Systems-2018-BNEF-Eaton-Statkraft.pdf

About the Renewable Energy Association (REA)

The REA is the UK’s largest trade association for renewable energy and clean technologies with around 550 members operating across heat, transport, and power. The REA is a not-for-profit organisation that represents renewable energy and clean technology companies operating in over fourteen sectors, ranging from biogas and renewable fuels to solar and electric vehicle charging. Membership ranges from major multinationals to sole traders.

The REA’s UK Energy Storage group represents over 100 companies designing, manufacturing, installing and operating all forms of energy storage and associated systems, including gravity, compressed air, battery, pumped hydro, and heat-based systems. Further details about the sector group can be found here: https://www.r-e-a.net/member/uk-energy-storage

For more information, visit: www.r-e-a.net